Amazon | SDE-1 FTC | Bangalore | April 2025

I have recently given the interview for SDE-1 FTC (12 month contract) role with the Amazon Payments team. I have 2.5 years of experience. Here is my interview experience:

1. Round -1 : Online Assessment: Q1) There are N warehouses in a city. The 2D coordinates of these warehouses are given in the allocations array, where allocations[i][0], allocations[i][1] represent the coordinates of ith warehouse. You are initially at (0,0) coordinate, and can visit K warehouses. Find the K nearest warehouses from origin. Note: Distance of (x,y) from (0,0) is sqrt(x^2 + y^2). Q2) There is a 2-D grid of size M * N. The grid contains 0 (free cell), 1 (blocked cell) and 9 (destination cell). You are initially at (0,0) and can move in four directions (up, down, right, left) in one step. You cannot visit cells that have the value 1. There is atmost one cell in the grid that has value 9. Find the minimum number of steps to reach cell 9 from top left cell. If it's not possible to reach, return -1.

2. Round - 2 (F2F) : Data Structures and Algorithms Design a Youtube playlist with the following functionalities: a) addSong(songID, songName) => add at the end of playlist b) deleteSong(songID) => remove song if it exists c) moveNext() => move to next song d) moveBack() => move to previous song e) moveByKPositions(int k) => move by k positions f) playlistSize() => give number of songs in the playlist. Note: Only moveByKPositions() can be done in O(N) time, rest should work in O(1) time. Focus was on using the right data structure and algorithm, as well as writing clean and modular code. LP Questions: Tell me about a time when you prioritized the needs of a customer over your organization's needs.

3. Round-3: Problem Solving Q1) https://leetcode.com/problems/the-k-th-lexicographical-string-of-all-happy-strings-of-length-n/description/ Interviewer was fine with the backtracking approach. Q2) https://leetcode.com/problems/jump-game-ii/description/ Interviewer strictly wanted a solution that runs in O(N) time and uses only O(1) space. Interviewer did not accept the DP solution that use O(N) space. LP Questions: Tell about a time when you went through your codebase and optimized/fixed a bug on your own.

4. Round-4: Hiring Manager Round a) Tell about the best project you worked upon b) Tell about the most complex issue you worked upon and how you fixed it c) Tell about a time when you were unable to complete a task within a deadline and how you communicated with the stakeholders d) Tell about a time when you took ownership, went outside of your responsibility and completed a task e) Tell me about a time when you had a disagreement with your teammates and how did you resolve it f) All of your responses were mainly related to hardware projects, do you have any experience for previous questions in Java/Backend/Database